What 5 Things Happened to Our Soaps? | Editorial

Someone asked this question on another site.  What happened to the soaps?  They were the hottest thing going in the 70s, 80s and 90s.  So....what was it?  A combination of things, clearly, but possibly these 5 things are the major cause of their decline.

1)  Fascination with RECASTS  
Instead of letting "sleeping dogs lie" and moving forward when an actor has to leave and "making due" the powers that be were stuck on recasts.....and this annoyed viewers and did cost some loss of loyalty.  Todd Manning.  Tom Hardy.  Jessica Buchanan.  Emily Quartermaine.  Greenlee Smythe.  Bianca Montgomery.  Lucky Spencer.  Sam Rappaport.  AJ Quartermaine.  Ross Rayburn.  The list goes on and on and on.  WHY?  Someone goes, just let them go, write an ending for the character, leave a door or two open, and reach for bigger, better, newer things.  I remember a time when recasts were temporary because someone was SICK or ill or had to leave for a bit.  NO ONE wants the originals replaced....especially in the cases where they were exceedingly popular or, especially, a part of a supercouple or important family.  When for the RIGHT reason, a recast can work (i.e. Erika Slezak, she's a recast) but in most cases, just annoys us viewers.


2)  Following story/plot ideas and not staying true to characters
Someone thinks of a cool idea, and then puts it on a character.  Problem:  Whoever this someone is, he or she did not always check to see if the character would act that way or choose that path.  In a lot of cases, there were really big problems with this.  Tony Jones, for example, was completely gutted DESTROYED as a character.  I still cannot and will not get over that one.  Kevin Buchanan STABS Todd in the shoulder when catatonic?  Cat Hickland's Lindsay was sacrificed a lot of times to be a killer for storyline purposes.  Troy McIver as well, goes nuts.  And what about Brody Lovette.....we know what is coming.


3)  "Phasing out" of supercouples
Probably my favorite topic.  Those who watch soaps should really own this.  Whenever I hear someone say that they don't care about couples on soaps, I ask myself, "why watch then?"  Soaps are definitely about romance and about love, relationships and couples.  Secretly, doesn't everyone care about SOME couple on SOME level, even if they do so covertly.  And, what happened was.....the shows stopped promoting the couples, and instead of giving them adversity that they could face together to keep them stronger, they felt splitting them apart was best.  WRONG.  We loved watching Anna and Duke go through that mob story.  Luke and Laura on the run.  Todd and Blair bickering and trying to make things work.  The concept of the supercouple is all but gone, and very few remain intact.  And, not every couple that someone makes a shortened squish name for is a supercouple, people.  There has to be magic, a huge following, and some kind of adverse conditions that they stick out together and become stronger from.  All but gone.


4)  Decline in "stay at home moms" and increased internet access.
More and more people ARE NOT HOME during the day.  More and more of them come home and use the internet to view the shows.  Ratings go down, and it "looks" like the audience does not care.  Not true at all.  However, no way to really track how many times I watch the cabin scenes with Todd and Blair over on You Tube.  During the 70s, my mom was not working.  She was home every day when I got there, watching the shows, and I watched too, even if I was just playing in the same room, or whatever.  In the 80s, Mom started working just part time, so she would still be home with us when we got home from school.  More General Hospital.  And, in summer, One Life to Live, too.  Now, no one in my family is home during the day.  My mom works every day (in her 70s), I work every day, my son is at school, etc.  No one can watch until night time, either on Soapnet, or to make it quicker and more painless, possibly the internet.


5)  Decreased spending, promotion, and epic stories/location shoots.
Let's just compare these things to, say Capricorn, or the Haunted Starr:  The Lefthanded Boy.  The Aztec Treasure.  The WSB Biscayne Islands and Mount Rushmore Capers.  Eterna.  The Iguazu Falls.  The Old West.  Las Vegas.  The Cleopatra Wedding in Central Park.   Need I say more?  The stories linked almost everyone in town and spanned full summers or whole semesters.  Promos.  Commercials during prime time.  Prime time episodes, in some cases.  The networks CARED to promote the shows, and it worked.  Even the MUSIC that the shows either had composed or integrated made the shows more impressive.  Cutbacks certainly did not help either, but the lack of investment at the top hurt the shows tremendously!  The whole desertion of the shows and core casts by the executive end of the soaps is what is causing the gradual demise, whether intentional or not, and we have to suffer through it.

Kudos to Prospect Park for at least TRYING to make this work.  Of course, the outcome cannot be predicted now, but at least there is some hope for the shows to continue and possibly rise to the top again.  Hopefully they will keep actors, couples, epic stories and appealing relationships at the forefront.


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